The San Juan Water Conservancy District is working with local graduate student Monica Nigon to implement low-tech process-based restoration (LTPBR) structures in a drainage in our San Juan National Forest.
LTPBR is a cost-effective and simple way of restoring damaged watersheds and drainages using easily-accessible materials such as rocks and logs. If you attended last week’s film screening of “Thinking Like Water,” you’ll know that these types of structures work to slow water down in a drainage to prevent sediment erosion and allow the water to soak into its historic water table. This stores the water for both drought and flood resilience and prevents runoff into our reservoirs and rivers. The structures also restore native vegetation and increase biodiversity.
These methods have proven highly successful all around the southwest. Pioneered in New Mexico by Bill Zeedyk, LTPBR structures have restored wet meadows in the Kit Carson National Forest and have exploded in use in Gunnison. The restoration achieved has provided critical habitat for the threatened Gunnison sage grouse and restored incised channels that would otherwise send water and sediment downstream unstored.
This management and ecosystem restoration project utilizes a rock structure called a Zuni bowl. The structure works to prevent the progression of a headcut up a drainage by stacking rocks like a life-sized Tetris game. In this case, the Zuni bowl will prevent further sediment runoff into Hatcher Reservoir, which supplies Pagosa Springs’ drinking water. It will also restore native wet meadow species such as sedges.
All you need for a LTPBR structure is some rocks, some wheelbarrows and shovels, and people to get involved.
To learn more, contact Monica Nigon at mnigon.sjwcd@gmail.com